


we'll make the same mistakes

by Kandakicksass



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age of Ultron (sort of), I'm bullshitting things, Loki needs some friends, M/M, Poor Loki, Poor Tony Stark, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Vaguely related to the trailer, preslash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-22 06:43:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2498381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kandakicksass/pseuds/Kandakicksass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony is assaulted by Thor after Ultron's reveal, Loki sees some similarities between the genius and himself.<br/>Making allies is never a bad thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't read the Age of Ultron comics and thus have no idea what's going on. I'm bullshitting here, and if I continue this, I'll be making it up almost entirely. But I had a plot bunny, so sue me.

One second, he’s choking on Thor’s large hand, only barely able to keep from kicking his legs like a panicked animal. The next, he’s sprawled on a cold cement floor, coughing desperately. He doesn’t expect to see fevered green eyes and a mess of black hair when he looks up (vision swimming, eyes watering—), but he’s not surprised. Not really.

“Will you live, Stark? Thor has a strong grip.” The words are quiet, each letter emphasized so that the ‘p’ pops in the silent room. It looks like an abandoned factory of some sort, probably outside of the city. His city, which seems as if it will turn against him again.

“It seems I’m so unlucky, Reindeer Games” he wheezes, rubbing his throat and letting Loki pull him to his feet. The god is silent, watching Tony with those intense eyes. “Did you pull me out of there?”

“I watch your goings-on occasionally,” he confesses without a scrap of shame. He’s indifferent about the admission; he doesn’t seem to care. “I was… sympathetic; I am familiar with Thor’s manhandling. You caught me feeling benevolent.” There was no real emotion in his words; just intensity.

Tony doesn’t know what vulnerability makes him say it, but he feels like he needs to. He feels this yearning , this fire in his lungs to make someone else hear it. “I didn’t – this wasn’t me, Loki. I didn’t do this on purpose. I can take responsibility when it’s my fault, but I can’t take responsibility for Ultron. I was trying to help.” And he  _was_. He was so sick of things being his fault; he'd only been trying to do some good, to prove that he could. To prove himself to those that near self-sacrifice hadn't yet entirely convinced.

“Of course you were,” Loki agrees without hesitation, but something in his tone makes it seem as if Loki couldn't care one way or the other. “You, Midgard’s little protector – I could not imagine that you did this on purpose.” Tony nods, hesitantly, for once unable to throw out an easy quip. Loki continues, getting closer, his hand moving from Tony’s forearm to his neck. “But they will not believe you. They will eventually turn against you; your reasoning will mean nothing to them.”

“Look, Lokes –“

Loki pushes him against a wall, expression manic. His eyes can’t seem to focus, but always return to Tony’s. “All friends like that, they will never listen. Men like us have only one option, to trust no-one who will betray their allies for the so-called greater good. They do not even understand what the greater good truly is.”

“And you do?” Tony snaps at last, pushing Loki away. He backs up, but Tony has a sneaking suspicion it’s only because he was humoring him.

“I know better than any the lengths a ruler must go to for the ‘greater good,’” Loki says quietly, his eyes finally resting, for now, on Tony, instead of flickering around the barren room. “And I would go to those lengths, though it makes me a _monster_.”

“Sorry to break it to you, babe, but we’re not the same. I see where you’re going with this, and I feel for you – really, I do – but that’s not what’s going on here. Ultron, when this started – it wasn’t _like_ that. I’m not responsible for Ultron going off the rails; it shouldn’t have turned into this.”

“It never seems like it,” the god whispers, and Tony is at a loss for words. “But they will twist it, and twist it, until that is all that’s left. The fact that it _happened_ , regardless of the original intentions.”

“They’ve really got you all wound up wrong, haven’t they?” He shakes his head at Loki slowly, astounded. He’d never realized just how deep Loki’s crazy went; he’d always sort of assumed that it was mostly pure evil and arrogance that motivated him.

“I am wound just right – right enough to see the _truth_ , Stark. And you will see as well. They will show you, before long.” He backs up again, but before he does, he runs one big, cold hand down the side of Tony’s face. “When they do, call for me. We are, deep down, on the same side – we both understand the lengths we must go to for peace, for _good_. I am a powerful ally, Anthony Stark.”

“And just how do I ‘call for you,’ Reindeer Games? You gonna slip me your number with a note that says ‘call for a good time’ on the back?” He laughs awkwardly, backing up himself, but Loki just gives him a queer smile, not at all malevolent.

“Call my name and I will come. I will be listening for you – and you will call, Stark.” He vanishes in a flash of green light, and Tony slumps back against the wall Loki had pushed him against minutes before.  

Tony realizes that he wasn’t given a choice in the matter – Loki has recruited him, like a good old-fashioned draft. What scares Tony is the idea that he might be right – that there might be something that makes them similar. The idea that Loki might be right about them making good allies terrifies him.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, where it has been sitting ignored since he had been transported to the middle of nowhere. “Jarvis. Location?”

“Outer Manhattan, sir. Shall I send a car?”

He closes his eyes, forcing himself to breathe deeply. “Yeah. Have Happy come pick me up. Much obliged.”

“Of course, sir.”

He walks outside and finds a bit of rubble to sit on while he waits. By his estimation, he has half an hour to forty-five minutes before Happy will get there. It’s plenty of time to consider his options, in theory, because there’s no way he will get desperate enough to actually call Loki’s name. Still, it’s good to think about.

A man should know all his options.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This hasn't been beta'd. I don't know what's happening - I am quite literally bullshitting it in the extremes. I hope you like it anyway. Now that we've established I will be continuing it when the fancy strikes me, I suppose we'll be seeing Loki again soon. :)

It’s not until later, when he gets back to Avengers tower and realizes that he’s the _only one home_ , when he starts to feel the impact of what happened. He stops on Steve’s floor, because Steve is the voice of reason and is usually there in spite of having an apartment in Brooklyn, and the entire floor is empty. It’s not until he reaches Natasha’s floor and finds all of her most important things gone that he really starts to panic, starts to feel the crushing _abandonment_ that he’d finally gotten over being afraid of (for the most part).

None of them are there, and their things are gone.

“When did they leave?” he chokes out, standing in the middle of Bruce’s floor – _Bruce_ , who is probably his closest friend, who is gone just like the rest of them. The silence is killing him.

“ _Half an hour after you were taken in the middle of your… disagreement._ ” Jarvis doesn’t sound pleased, either, but his voice is soft, an attempt at comforting. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, then spins around and stalks back toward the elevator.

“My lab,” he growls out, and it sounds tough and angry, but really, he’s just upset. Jarvis starts the elevator without argument, and when they get there, Jarvis also locks it down to max security without being asked. Only Pepper would be able to get in. Tony takes a minute to thank his procrastination that he’d never gotten around to giving the Avengers a password override.

It’s the first time he considers, _really_ considers, Loki’s offer. He’s not saying he wants to take over the world, but to be honest, he doesn’t really think that’s what Loki’s after, either.

What he’s after is a real ally, because his have left and if he’s being honest with himself, he’s way too chickenshit to call them up and ask if they’re gone for good. What does that say about him, that he’s too scared of rejection to call his teammates, to call his best friend aside from Rhodey and Pepper?

But Loki is promising him a companion, someone who will have his back, who understands the crippling fear of being abandoned for good. The fear that he’d never been willing to admit to, before he started letting his team in.

He gets as far as opening his mouth, his tongue curling around the _L,_ just to call him here and ask what Loki will want from him if he _does_ agree to this. Then he forcibly stops himself, realizes his hands are shaking, and sits down in front of some project without knowing what it is.

“Jarv, specs,” he says firmly, and listens as Jarvis explains whatever the project is.

He works until his stomach is yelling at him, and when he gets up to go get food, Jarvis stop him as he heads toward the door.

“The Avengers just arrived, sir,” Jarvis tells him, and he stops where he’s standing. “They do not sound happy. Apparently, they were informed that you are at the tower. I don’t suggest going out at the moment.”

Tony, wide eyed and still hoping, clenching his hands into fists. “Play the audio feed, J. I want to hear what they’re saying.”

“Sir –“

” _Do it_.”

There is a moment of a static sound, then his team’s voices filter through clearly.

_“I don’t know if we should just –“_

_“That’s right, Banner. You don’t know. You saw what that thing did – Stark made that happen.”_ That is Clint’s voice, steely. “ _I don’t know why any of us were surprised. He’s always had a talent for creating destruction. You don’t get the nickname the ‘Merchant of Death’ for nothing_.”

Tony hasn’t heard Clint that angry since Loki’s first go-round in New York. He doesn’t want to admit how much the words hurt.

“ _Quit calling him Stark like you’re not his friend,_ ” Natasha says next, and Tony closes his eyes, telling himself it’s not relief he’s feeling.

“ _I agree,”_ Steve adds. _“We don’t know the whole story.”_

 _“We’re still going in to lock him up until this thing is figured out_ ,” Clint snaps back, but he sounds guilty. “ _And he deserves it. He made that thing happen.”_

 _“It is suspicious,”_ Natasha murmurs, and Tony can’t help but feel like he’s been stabbed in the gut. These are his teammates – why don’t they have any faith in him? Don’t they know him at least a little bit better than that? It’s been two _fucking_ years since New York, and they’ve managed to work as a unit for that long. No, they weren’t entirely together for it, but they’ve worked together plenty of times. All of them except Thor have stayed in Avengers Tower extensively. It’s been months since SHEILD fell apart and he’d thought that had helped them trust each other more, become a tighter knit group.

He thought they were a _team_.

He doesn’t want to let Loki’s words into his head, but he’s reminded that none of them came to help him with the Mandarin, unlike when Natasha went to help Steve with the Winter Soldier ( _his name is_ Bucky _, Tony. He’s my friend_ ). Bruce had been there, but none of the others.

 _They will show you, before long_.

“Stark!” He hears pounding on the door. Steve, then, to make that loud of a sound. “Tony, open up. We don’t want to use force.”

“Tell them I’m not here,” he whispers, and Jarvis obliges, but they aren’t convinced.

“We’re not stupid, Tony. Let us in!”

“The back elevator, J,” he hisses, and makes quick work for the back of his workshop. It opens when he’s a couple feet away, and he slips in. A quick check confirms he has his phone and wallet, and he supposes that’s probably all he needs. “Turn off _all_ methods of tracking on my phone. I don’t want anyone to find me, especially Fury. Don’t tell Pepper or Rhodey where I am.”

“Does that sound particularly wise, sir?”

He clenches his jaw. “It’s for the best.”

“They’re in the lab, sir.”

“Straight down the garage, then. Lock down everything important; I don’t know when I’ll be back.” He doesn’t like this tightness in his chest – the shrapnel is _gone_ , damnit.

In twenty minutes he’s heading out of the city, with dark shades covering his face. He’ll give himself credit for one thing –

He hasn’t said Loki’s name. Not yet.


End file.
